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> A man in a desert and a sailor at sea will think about water very differently. Maybe there are more sailors here and they may feel differently, but that's no

> A man in a desert and a sailor at sea will think about water very differently. Maybe there are more sailors here and they may feel differently, but that's not true for me. For me open ocean is about as close to desert as possible and sea water is like sand. Probably the only thing different is that you can stuff a lot more fresh water onto a boat that you can stuff on a camel or expedition car. And the way it is stuffed means there is less chance you will loose it. And sailing is incredibly involved and technical compared to say riding a camel so you have other problems that occupy your mind. So it probably takes less space in your mind while you are sailing than while you are crossing Sahara. But if your boat quits on you in the middle of an ocean it is more or less as if camel or expedition car did. You lend your life to the elements and to your equipment. If it fails and you can't fix it, you die. --- I had a discussion with somebody that incessantly wants me to "save" water supposedly because many people have shortage of it. I tell her "Our water comes from local river. We don't have water shortage. Any water that I do not use will just happily flow to the sea. Any water that I use will get cleaned up and dumped into the same river from which it came, to happily continue its journey to the sea." Seems the argument doesn't work. People are strange sometimes...

tshaddox 5y ago
I’m not sure your dismissal of “saving water” makes sense, or rather, your dismissal would apply just as well to any situation where one’s personal use of water will not directly cause a shortage of water for someone else. The whole point of recommending people to save water isn’t that one’s own water conservation will directly cause a measurable re-allocation of water to someone else. It’s more akin to moral advice, something like “act in a way that would have good outcomes if everyone acted that way.” I suppose it’s okay to explicitly dismiss all moral recommendations of that form, but it’s worth noting that this form is extremely common and not something I would call “strange.” It’s basically the same moral recommendation as “don’t butt in line even if no one is going to stop you.” To map that idea directly onto your situation, I guess it would be something like “if 10 million people moved to the vicinity of your small river, there probably would be a water shortage that would require everyone to be conscientious about their water usage.”
- lmilcin 5y ago
  If people moved there would be reason to save water and then I would be doing it See, there is already a lot of stuff to worry about in life. If you can act on a hypothetical problem, why not redirect your effort to an actual one for some real world benefits? Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous but so is saving water when there is no benefit from it.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    > Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous I'll bite - it doesn't sound ridiculous because it is highly likely that there is going to be power hungry air conditioning equipment in use. I think it's an example of an unfortunate phenomenon where if you deviate from the accepted cargo cult practices you run the risk of missing some detail and making things worse, at which point you get the blame, but conversely you don't get the credit for doing things better than average. In fact it's likely there is a peanut gallery just waiting for you to make a mistake so they can punish you for being a renegade.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      Sorry, I just can't parse your argument.
    - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
      Some places have no need for heating or cooling. Like my rental in Santa Barbara.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Where would that line be though? Would you never consider reducing your water usage by a liter per day until there was literally someone near to you that was dying of thirst who you could directly give the liter of water to?
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  That's a harmful way of thinking. That's the kind of rationale that shames fat people for leaving food from single-sized meals because somebody far away lacks it, for example. The GP saving water would have no impact at all on the people that miss it. It's not a "do your small part", it's simply no part at all.
gilbetron 5y ago
I live in a place where fresh water is all over the place, and have had this same discussion with "environmentally conscious" people more than once. Me taking shorter showers, or not watering the lawn, or not letting the tap run until it gets cold will not affect other people's ability to get water. At all. However, it does cost energy, I realized. And that's at least something to consider. Although minimally so, but at least it made me think a bit :) Also, people love to talk about water as if it is a limited resource - it is only a limited resource in the local sense. On the global sense, we aren't changing the amount of water available, just the energy needed to get it.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  That energy argument depends a lot. My parents have their own well. It is less than 2m from the side of the house. Bottom of the well is about 2m below ground level, so you can almost stand in the well and stick your head out. There is usually about 50cm of water at the bottom of the well that gets quickly replenished whenever you take some out. When we are talking the energy usage, the energy used to pump that water is practically negligible. Now I understand this is as good as it ever gets (unless you have a stream that can actually produce energy) but consider that pumping water is almost everywhere taking less energy than energy to heat it up. And if we go into processes like desalination, the amount of energy used grows very quickly. But this can be offset for example by building a solar plant dedicated to providing energy for desalination.

tshaddox 5y ago

I’m not sure your dismissal of “saving water” makes sense, or rather, your dismissal would apply just as well to any situation where one’s personal use of water will not directly cause a shortage of water for someone else. The whole point of recommending people to save water isn’t that one’s own water conservation will directly cause a measurable re-allocation of water to someone else. It’s more akin to moral advice, something like “act in a way that would have good outcomes if everyone acted that way.” I suppose it’s okay to explicitly dismiss all moral recommendations of that form, but it’s worth noting that this form is extremely common and not something I would call “strange.” It’s basically the same moral recommendation as “don’t butt in line even if no one is going to stop you.” To map that idea directly onto your situation, I guess it would be something like “if 10 million people moved to the vicinity of your small river, there probably would be a water shortage that would require everyone to be conscientious about their water usage.”

lmilcin 5y ago
If people moved there would be reason to save water and then I would be doing it See, there is already a lot of stuff to worry about in life. If you can act on a hypothetical problem, why not redirect your effort to an actual one for some real world benefits? Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous but so is saving water when there is no benefit from it.
- foobarian 5y ago
  > Should I be insulating my house to save energy even if I lived in a warm country? See, this sound ridiculous I'll bite - it doesn't sound ridiculous because it is highly likely that there is going to be power hungry air conditioning equipment in use. I think it's an example of an unfortunate phenomenon where if you deviate from the accepted cargo cult practices you run the risk of missing some detail and making things worse, at which point you get the blame, but conversely you don't get the credit for doing things better than average. In fact it's likely there is a peanut gallery just waiting for you to make a mistake so they can punish you for being a renegade.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    Sorry, I just can't parse your argument.
  - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
    Some places have no need for heating or cooling. Like my rental in Santa Barbara.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Where would that line be though? Would you never consider reducing your water usage by a liter per day until there was literally someone near to you that was dying of thirst who you could directly give the liter of water to?
marcosdumay 5y ago
That's a harmful way of thinking. That's the kind of rationale that shames fat people for leaving food from single-sized meals because somebody far away lacks it, for example. The GP saving water would have no impact at all on the people that miss it. It's not a "do your small part", it's simply no part at all.

gilbetron 5y ago

I live in a place where fresh water is all over the place, and have had this same discussion with "environmentally conscious" people more than once. Me taking shorter showers, or not watering the lawn, or not letting the tap run until it gets cold will not affect other people's ability to get water. At all. However, it does cost energy, I realized. And that's at least something to consider. Although minimally so, but at least it made me think a bit :) Also, people love to talk about water as if it is a limited resource - it is only a limited resource in the local sense. On the global sense, we aren't changing the amount of water available, just the energy needed to get it.

lmilcin 5y ago
That energy argument depends a lot. My parents have their own well. It is less than 2m from the side of the house. Bottom of the well is about 2m below ground level, so you can almost stand in the well and stick your head out. There is usually about 50cm of water at the bottom of the well that gets quickly replenished whenever you take some out. When we are talking the energy usage, the energy used to pump that water is practically negligible. Now I understand this is as good as it ever gets (unless you have a stream that can actually produce energy) but consider that pumping water is almost everywhere taking less energy than energy to heat it up. And if we go into processes like desalination, the amount of energy used grows very quickly. But this can be offset for example by building a solar plant dedicated to providing energy for desalination.